


Circumstantial Lesbianism

by Fallynleaf



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, Internalized Homophobia, Sharing Body Heat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-02-27
Packaged: 2018-01-13 22:55:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1243633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallynleaf/pseuds/Fallynleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Britta is sleeping over at Troy, Abed, and Annie's apartment one night when the heater stops working.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circumstantial Lesbianism

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece for [The Tauntaun Solution](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1134672), but it can be read separately.

"Britta?"

A careful, tentative knock sounded against the door.

Hell had frozen over. Britta was sure of it. Hell had frozen over, and the frost had come creeping up from the abyss to carve delicate shapes into the condensation on the window. And also to rap at the door.

"Britta, can I come in? It's really cold!"

Britta glared at the door. If she could just go to sleep, she'd get hours of blissful unawareness of the temperature.

"Britta!"

"Come in," Britta said through a blanket.

The door opened and a massive bundle of a figure waddled in, covered in layers and layers of fabric. The figure took a few teetering steps towards the closet, catching the corner of a blanket and almost crashing to the floor.

"Annie, why are you here?" Britta asked.

"I have to get more blankets." The closet door swung open.

There was a moment of quiet. "Um..." Britta said.

Annie turned away from the closet to glance at the bed, where all of the carefully folded sheets and quilts were spread in a haphazard stack.

"In my defense, it's fucking cold," Britta said.

"You should feel the couch!" Annie said. "It's like sleeping on a block of ice!"

"Hey!" Britta said. "You're the one who said: 'you're the guest, so I'll take the couch and you can have my bed!' If you can't handle it, we can just switch, and _I'll_ go out there and brave the cold like a goddamn _woman_."

Annie made a muffled noise. She sounded possibly offended.

"You know what? If we can't reach an agreement about this, how about we just share the bed? It's big enough, isn't it?" Britta said.

"Fine," Annie said, waddling closer.

Britta rolled over a bit in order to leave some space on the other side of the bed. "Just, let's just agree to not let things get weird, okay?" she said.

"Okay." Annie spent a precious minute exposing herself to the cold as she carefully stripped her blanket shield layer by layer and added each blanket to the growing cover of them on the bed. When she got down to the final blanket, she was whimpering.

Britta had never before seen Annie scramble so ungracefully in her haste to get beneath the covers. It took a few minutes before Annie's shivering abated, but finally she grew still, and Britta turned over and thought she could finally get to sleep.

"Britta," Annie started.

Of course it would be one of _those_ sleepovers. The kind where you stay up deep into the bowels of night talking about _feelings_ and shit.

"What, Annie?" Britta asked, annoyed. She turned her head, and Annie was only a shadowy shape beside her, silhouetted against the white-blue lines of frost on the window.

"Britta, I've been meaning to ask you..." Annie said. "What does it feel like to kiss another girl?"

"I..." Britta was speechless.

"Is it different from kissing a boy? Is it gross? Does it feel good?" Annie's expression was probably wide-eyed with innocence.

Britta abandoned any hope of sleep. "It's, well... it's..." she said. She made a vague gesture with her hands that illustrated nothing. "It's mashing your lips together with another person. Except both of you are wearing lipstick. And it was stupid, and you did it only to make a point. Can we go to sleep now?" she sighed.

"Can you show me?" Annie's voice was brave. Dangerous. "Show me what it feels like, I mean?" she wavered a little.

"Annie, I think this qualifies as things getting weird," Britta said.

"But I don't know! I'm not all worldly and experienced like you!" Annie pouted.

Britta relented a little. "Okay, fine. I'll show you. Then we can both roll over and get some sleep!" she said, annoyed.

Britta sat up partially and wriggled closer to Annie, holding the blankets tightly wrapped around her body as she moved. She reached out and her fingers found Annie's face, brushed against her lips. Then Britta leaned over and Annie arched up to meet her, and their noses and foreheads smashed together somewhere in the middle before their mouths roughly aligned.

The kiss was wet. It was amateurish. It was a fumbling mess.

Britta started to withdraw, but then Annie's hand emerged from the blankets and hooked around the back of Britta's head and brought her down again.

And for some reason, this second kiss was different.

 _Annie knows how to do this_ , Britta thought with a degree of surprise. Her whole body tingled, reverberating with shared warmth. And arousal. That realization was what made her finally pull away, brushing aside Annie's hand.

"There. That's what-" Britta said. Her voice was rough. She swallowed, then tried again. "That's what it feels like, I guess."

Certain parts of Britta's body certainly didn't feel like sleeping, now.

"Hey, you know what?" Annie said. "That made me actually feel _warm_."

"Yeah. Kissing does that, sometimes," Britta admitted. "Not that I'd recommend it if, say, it's forty below and you're got hypothermia." She stared up at the ceiling. "Or if the heater's broken and you're sharing a bed for warmth."

Annie's silence was a guilty one. "I'm sorry I made things weird," she said. "It's just..." she sighed. "I don't know. _I don't know_! I'm Annie the naive one, Annie the prude, Annie the... almost a virgin." She shifted restlessly beside Britta.

Britta waited. She knew she'd just say something stupid and mess everything up if she didn't.

"Sometimes I just don't even get the _point_ of sex," Annie continued.

"Orgasms," Britta said. "Orgasms are the point."

"But I've never- I mean, h-he did, that one time, but I never, _y'know_ , finished." Annie's voice went almost quiet enough to be lost entirely in the blankets.

"Wait, you didn't even _come_ during your first time? Really? He was that much of an jackass?" Britta exclaimed. "Assuming that's what you were even saying. Since you never use the proper terms for anything."

"Yeah, well, just because s-some people can say-" Annie said, faltering.

"Penis!" Britta shouted, turning to face her.

"Hey!" Annie said. She reached out and pressed a finger to Britta's lips. "Shh, we don't want to wake Troy and Abed. They might come and _investigate_ , or something."

Annie's touch was warm. Like kissing her had been. Britta blinked rapidly, trying to clear those thoughts from her mind. She wasn't a lesbian, after all. And somehow, she didn't think that circumstantial lesbianism was even a valid excuse in this situation. This wasn't jail.

"But even if you didn't come, you've had orgasms before, so you understand why they're awesome, right?" Britta said, her lips moving against Annie's finger as she talked.

"Um, well, no, not really," Annie said, slowly retracting her hand.

"Of course you haven't," Britta said, expelling a breath.

A few minutes passed. They were awkward ones, as Britta had feared. She'd never been able to do sleepovers right.

"Hey, Britta," Annie said. "How does lesbian sex even work if there's no..."

"Penis?" Britta filled in.

Annie winced. "Yeah."

"If you've had halfway decent straight sex, you'd know how it could be possible with two women," Britta said. "But then, I guess you _haven't_ had halfway decent straight sex, have you?" She looked at the silhouetted blur that was Annie lying beside her.

Annie waited, her breath soft and quiet.

"Well, there's always your hands and your mouth. Women can use those just as well as men, I think," Britta said. "Of course, I wouldn't know, since I've never had sex with another woman, but I've gotten myself off before, so it only makes sense. Oh god, that was a little TMI. Sorry. I'm just... not good at the whole sleepover thing."

"It's okay," Annie said. "Honestly, sleepovers _always_ get a little weird. It's part of the fun."

"Really?" Britta asked, surprised.

"Yeah."

Britta relaxed a little bit. "I guess if you think this is okay, I can be cool with that." Even with the crisp cold biting at her face and neck, she had managed to settle into a feeling of relative comfort. Sometimes it helped to share a bed with someone, even if it _was_ just for warmth.

"Britta..." Annie started. "What does it feel like to, um, _you know_."

"Annie, it's really not _that_ difficult to say! Are you trying to ask what an orgasm feels like? Because I can tell you that it feels... good. Like, _really_ good."

A moment passed as Annie deliberated Britta's response. "How do you... use your hands to do it?"

"How do you _masturbate_?" Britta translated. "It's, well, pretty intuitive, I guess. Not that difficult to figure out. If you touch yourself and it feels good, you probably want to keep touching yourself there."

"Can you... show me?"

A tremor went through Britta's body. She didn't want to trace it back to its source, fearing what it might mean. "Annie," she started. "I'm not- I'm not a lesbian, okay?"

"I'm not either!" Annie was quick to say. "I just don't know how any of this works, and I think... I'd like to find out. I can't ask any of the guys about this, and I certainly can't ask Shirley, so, well, here we are, I guess."

"Have you considered consulting the internet?" Britta asked, her voice dry.

Annie shook her head. "What, no! It's too... embarrassing. What if someone goes through my browser history?" Annie took a breath.

"So it's embarrassing to ask an anonymous computer algorithm, but it's not embarrassing to ask _me_?" Britta asked, quirking an eyebrow in the dark, where the gesture went unnoticed.

"I trust you, Britta," Annie said simply.

That was it. The nail in the coffin in this already rapidly degenerating night. "Okay, well, I guess I could show you. Though, there's one condition. Annie, promise me you won't freak, okay?" Britta sighed. The moment Annie couldn't do this anymore, she knew she couldn't, either. They had to take this all the way or nowhere at all.

"I promise," Annie said. The words were heavy in the frosted air.

Considering the cold, there was only one way Britta was willing to do this. She scooted closer to Annie once more, stopping when there was maybe a little more than a foot of space between them. She almost leaned over and kissed Annie, but they were done with that, so instead, Britta teased at her own lip and then, slowly, she moved her hand towards Annie beneath the covers.

After a little bit of fumbling, she found the waistband of Annie's pajama bottoms. Britta lifted both layers of elastic and eased her hand in.

When Britta's fingers found her mark, Annie let out a gasp.

A shudder went through Annie's body as Britta's hand started to make little movements,.

Britta watched Annie's reactions carefully, trying to adjust how she did this according to how Annie's body responded. It felt weird to touch another woman like this. Yet, there was an undeniable heat that settled in the pit of Britta's abdomen, unmistakable in what it meant.

Annie started to squirm a little, and Britta's fingers grew moist. Britta moved her hand with a new determination, knowing that they were almost done, already trying to pretend that getting Annie off wasn't turning her on.

Britta listened to Annie's panting, to the little expressive noises she made. She couldn't make out Annie's features in the darkness, but wondered if her own expression was clear as day in the blue starlight from the window. If Annie could see Britta's dilated pupils, her flushed lips.

All at once, it was over. With a tremor through Annie's body, with a quiet cry that became a quiet moan, her movements subsided. Britta waited for a few moments afterward, and then she withdrew her hand, leaving Annie's warmth behind.

Annie's silhouette stared at her. Britta still couldn't see her, but she could imagine Annie's wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression, all exposed and expressive as Annie always was.

"Well, that's it. That was an orgasm," Britta said, expelling a breath. She did not add that what they had done was also lesbian sex. She preferred to consider it a teaching moment, helping Annie have a long-overdue sexual awakening. Assisted masturbation, maybe.

"Wow," Annie breathed, after she took a minute to recollect herself. "That was, um, enlightening."

"It was nothing. Forget about it," Britta said, turning over. She wanted to excuse herself to the bathroom so that she could stick the hand that was just inside Annie into herself. But it was too cold for that, and besides, Britta didn't particularly like masturbating in someone else's bathroom. It felt sleazy.

Aroused and restless, Britta shifted again, trying to find a position that would get her quickly asleep.

"Britta?" Annie asked calmly.

"Yes?" Britta frowned.

"Should I, um, return the favor?" Annie's voice was small. "I mean, that's typically how it works, right?"

Britta rolled over to face her again. "Are you sure you're comfortable doing that?" she asked.

"You did it for me, so I can do it for you," Annie said, determined. "I... think?" she wavered.

"Well, if you want to, then go ahead. I'm certainly not going to stop you," Britta said. She hoped she sounded nonchalant rather than eager.

Annie's hand found its way into Britta's underwear quickly and inelegantly. She paused when the tips of her fingers made contact with Britta's skin. Britta imagined that Annie probably grimaced, then. A fake smile on her face, pretending that she had the confidence to really do this.

But then Annie's hand moved, roaming over Britta's skin, dipping into its creases and folds. She was clearly inexperienced, but her touch elicited a hiss of pleasure from Britta regardless. Sometimes an unpracticed hand felt really, really good in its unpredictability.

Then Annie did something with her fingers, and Britta gritted her teeth and bit back the noise she almost made.

The only kind of sex Britta had was the noisy kind. She moaned, she made breathy sounds in the back of her throat, she muttered dirty remarks. She didn't get off quietly between breaths, laying almost still beneath the blankets with another woman's hand between her legs.

Britta had only had quiet orgasms when she'd still lived with her parents. When she would wait until the rest of the house had gone to sleep and slide her hand into her underwear and close her eyes, suppressing every noise she made in fear that someone in the house would wake up. She had only had quiet orgasms when she was repressing a part of herself, when sex was still new and somewhat relieving but also terrifying, in its own way.

Here, in this room, with Annie's fingers inside of her, Britta came with clenched teeth and an unraveled breath. There was that moment of white-hot intensity, which surged through Britta's body in ripples, making the cold seem all the colder in its wake. And then there was nothing. And Britta's breathing fell easy again.

Annie retracted her hand too early, before Britta had ridden out the aftershocks.

"Ew, now I need to wash my hand," Annie said, breaking the silence.

"Yeah, well, I hate to break it to you, but sex is gross," Britta said. "It's disgusting and wet and messy, and it smells and tastes a bit weird. That's just how it is."

Annie's arm darted out of the covers as she reached for the tissue box perching at the edge of the bedside table. She wiped off her hand with a tissue that glowed blue-white with captured starlight. "It's too cold for this," Annie said. "So I guess a tissue will just have to do for now. We can wash up in the morning. Do you want one? A tissue, I mean?"

"Uh, I kind of already took care of that problem," Britta said.

"What? You didn't... wipe your hand on the sheets, did you?" Annie asked, sounding shocked.

"Hey, sheets can be washed. And I didn't want to have to kill a tree," Britta said.

Annie made an offended noise, but didn't press any further about it. Britta was relieved. By all appearances, things had returned to normal. Annie shifted, curling around the hand she'd exposed to the cold, and then she went still.

Britta snuggled deeper into the blankets, already halfway asleep in her current state of post-orgasm drowsiness. Through half-lidded eyes, she stared at the lump of blankets that was Annie beside her, glad that her thoughts were already falling away. In the morning, she knew that none of this will have happened. In the morning, the apartment will be warmer again, and Britta will say goodbye to Annie, and then she'll go home to a working heater.

In the morning.


End file.
